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DR. BRECKINRIDGE'S 4tli ARTICLE ON THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 



THE CIVIL \YaT^: 

ITS NATURE AND END 



BY THE 



REV. ROJJEIIT j; BRECKINRIDGE, D. D., LL. D., 

PROFKSSOK IN DANVILLE THKOLOGICAL SEMIXARY. 



REPRINTED FROM THE DANVILLE QUARTERLY REVIEW, FOR DFC. 



18(JL 



C I X C I N X A T I : 

rUBLISIIED AT THE OFFICE OF TJTE ])AXVILLE l.'EVIEW 

Xo. 2:. \VKST FOUKTir STKKr.T. 

1S()I. 



ETi^-BS 



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5-5, 



1861.] THE CIYIL WAR. 63^ 



Art. III. — The Civil War : — Its Nature and End. 

I. The Restoration of Peace shown to be impossible, except on the 

condition of the Preservation of the Federal Union and Consti- 
tution. 

II. The Power of the Nation shown to be complete, and its Duty im- 
perative, to crush this Rebellion, and preserve the Federal Union 
and Constitution. 

III. The Internal State of the Country, as affected by the War. 

IV. The External Relations of the Country, considered with refer- 
ence to the War. 

I. The Restoration of Peace shown to be impossible, except on the condition of 
the Preservation of the Federal Union and Constitution. 

I. For what are we fighting, on one side, and on the other ? 
What are the interests at stake, so immense and so opposite, that 
justify either party to this war in embarking in it at first, or in 
prosecuting it with the terrible earnestness everywhere manifest ? 
^Y^lat is the present aspect of it, generally considered — what is 
its probable future course — what the conclusion that must be 
reached, at last ? What are to be its probable efi"ects — directly 
upon ourselves, indirectly upon the other nations of the earth, and 
in both ways upon the immediate future of the human race, and 
possibly upon generations to come ? How much of what either 
party is fighting for is really attainable, and of that which is at- 
tainable, how much is worth what it will cost ? These are ques- 
tions which every enlightened man — every free citizen — is bound 
to ask himself. The answer to them involves our lives and fortunes 
and liberties ; nay more than even these, our duty as citizens, as 
patriots, and as Christians. It is to render such aid as we may be 
able, to all who will accept our aid, in deciding these vast ques- 
tions, that we now attempt to develop still further the great 
truths we have discussed several times heretofore, and to apply 
them to the posture of public affairs now existing. 

There are considerations of various kinds, and of the most de- 
cisive force, which render it impossible for peace to be restored 
to the country, except upon the condition of a single National 
Government, common to the whole American people, and embra- 



640 THE crviL WAR. [Dec, 

cing every loyal and every revolted State. As a question of na- 
tional strength in the presence of all foreign nations — and there- 
fore of national independence; as a question of permanent na- 
tional life struggling against anarchy in the form of secession ; 
as a question of law, and government, and constitutional free- 
dom, measuring its strength against an immense and utterly prof- 
ligate political conspiracy ; as a question of personal freedom, 
and popular institutions, in conflict with a class minority pos- 
sessed of vast wealth, and reckless of everything but its own 
aggrandizement; as a question of the universal domination of 
this daring class, not only in the Slave States, so many of which 
it had temporarily subjugated, but over the nation itself, which 
it betrayed, plundered, insulted, and to which it claimed to dic- 
tate ignoble terms of composition, at the head of a military force 
threatening the capitol ; as a question of the duty of the nation 
to its loyal citizens, constituting at that time the actual majority 
in the fifteen Slave States — but suddenly and by fraud and vio- 
lence reduced to a state of helpless degradation : we attempted, 
from the beginning, to show that there was no course, either of 
honor, or duty, or safety left to the nation, except to meet force 
by force, and to maintain the institutions of the country, and 
enforce the laws of the land, by the whole power of the Ameri- 
can people. Nor do we suppose there is a single loyal person 
on this continent, who does not now look with contempt, or with 
execration, upon the conduct of Mr. Buchanan and his Cabinet, 
during the last year of his administration : nor a single one who 
does not applaud the vigor and determination which the Con- 
gress of the United States, under the lead of Mr. Lincoln, have 
manifested in maintaining the integrity of the Union. But what 
we have now to urge goes beyond the state of the question here- 
tofore discussed, and briefly recapitulated above. Influenced by 
such considerations as these, the nation accepted the war as un- 
avoidable. What we maintain is, not merely that those consid- 
erations forbid the nation to terminate the war forced upon her, 
except in its complete success, but that in the very nature of the 
case, of the country, of all our institutions, and of the war itself, 
permanent peace is impossible, except upon the condition of a 
single national government. We will endeavor to illustrate this 
idea. 



1861.] THE CIVIL WAR. 641 

Wlioever Tvill look at a map of the United States will observe 
that Louisiana lies on both sides of the Mississippi river, and 
that the States of Arkansas and Mississippi lie on the right and 
left banks of this gre^t stream — eight hundred miles of whose 
lower course is thus controlled by these three States, unitedly 
inhabited by hardly as many white people as inhabit the city of 
New York. Observe then the country drained by this river, and 
its affluents, commencing with Missouri on its west bank, and 
Kentucky on its east bank. There are nine or ten powerful 
States — large portions of three or four others — several large 
Territories, in all a country as large as all Europe, as fine as any 
under the sun, already holding many more people than all the 
revolted States — and destined to be one of the most populous 
and powerful regions of the earth. Does any one suppose that 
these powerful States — this great and energetic population — 
will ever make a peace that shall put the lower course of this 
single and mighty natural outlet to the sea, in the hands of a 
foreign government far weaker than themselves ? If there is any 
such person, he knows little of the past history of mankind ; and 
will, perhaps, excuse us for reminding him that the people of 
Kentucky, before they were constituted a State, gave formal no- 
tice to the Federal Government, when General Washington was 
President, that if the United States did not acquire Louisiana, 
they would themselves conquer it. The mouths of the Missis- 
sippi belong, by the gift of God, to the inhabitants of its great 
Valley. Nothing but irresistible force can disinherit them. 

Try another territorial aspect of the case. There is a bed of 
mountains abutting on the left bank of the Ohio, which covers 
all Western Virginia, and all Eastern Kentucky, to the width, 
from east to west, in those two States, of three or four hundred 
miles. These mountains stretching southwestwardly, pass entire- 
ly through Tennessee — cover the back parts of North Carolina 
and Georgia — heavily invade the northern partof Alabama — and 
make a figure even in the back parts of South Carolina and the 
eastern parts of Mississippi ; having a course of, perhaps, seven 
or eight hundred miles, and running far south of the northern 
limit of profitable cotton culture. It is a region of 300,000 square 
miles — trenching upon eight or nine Slave States, though near- 



642 THE CIVIL WAK. [Dec, 

\j destitute of slaves itself — trenching upon at least five cotton 
States, though raising no cotton itself. The western part of 
Maryland and two-thirds of Pennsylvania, are embraced in the 
northeastern continuation of this remarkable region. Can any- 
thing that passes under the name of statesmansliip, be more pre- 
posterous, than the notion of permanent peace on this continent, 
founded on the abnegation of a common and paramount govern- 
ment, and the idea of the supercilious domination of the cotton 
interest and the slave trade, over such a mountain empire, so lo- 
cated, and so peopled ? 

As a further proof of the utter impossibility of peace, except 
under a common government, and at once an illustration of the 
import of what has just been stated, and the suggestion of a new 
and insuperable difficulty ; let it be remembered that this great 
mountain region, throughout its general course, is more loyal to 
the Union than any other portion of the Slave States. It is the 
mountain counties of Maryland that have held treason in check 
in that State ; it is forty mountain counties in Western Virginia 
that have laid the foundation of a new and loyal commonwealth ; 
it is the mountain counties of Kentucky that first and most ea- 
gerly took up arms for the Union ; it is the mountain region of 
Tennessee that alone, in that dishonored State, furnished mar- 
tyrs in the sacred cause of freedom ; it is the mountain people 
of Alabama, that boldly stood out against the Confederate Gov- 
ernment, till their own leaders deserted and betrayed them. Now, 
is the nation prepared, under any imaginable circumstances, to 
sacrifice these heroic men, as a condition of peace conquered from 
them by traitors ? Will the nation sell the blood — we will not 
say of a race of patriots — but of even a single one of them ? 
The Representatives of these men sit in Congress ; their Senators 
are in the capitol. Will the rebel States dismember themselves, 
that cotton may have peace? Will the nation turn its back on 
the five Border Slave States — deliver over Western Virginia to 
the sword — and cover its own infamy under the ruins of the 
Constitution ? Never — never ! Our sole alternative — is victo- 
ry. To know this, is to render victory certain. 

Again: Consider the question of boundary, as preliminary to 
peace. We have shown, on a former occasion, that the States 



1861,] THE CIVIL WAB. 643 

of Maryland and Missouri stand in such relations, geographical 
and otherwise, to the nation, that they must necessarily share its 
fate. Since we gave expression to that opinion, much has hap- 
pened to strengthen it, and increase the difficulties of any peace- 
ful division of the country. Amongst other things, Congress has 
openly recognized the revolutionary Government in Western Vir- 
ginia — and received Senators and Representatives from States 
in open rebellion : the armies of the Confederate States have in- 
vaded Western Virginia, Missouri, and Kentucky : and to conquer 
a houndary extending to the Chesapeake, the Ohio, and the Mis- 
souri, is one of the avowed objects of those invasions. Whatever 
may have been the state of public opinion in any of the five 
Border Slave States, at an early stage of our national difficulties, 
at present there is not, probably, a single loyal citizen in either 
of them, who would entertain, for a moment, the idea of being 
attached to the Southern Confederacy — or who would not de- 
nounce as atrocious, on the part of the General Government, any 
suggestion that looked toward the surrender of those five States 
to the Southern Confederacy, as a condition of peace. On the 
opposite side, it is most probable that every secessionist in those 
five States would greatly prefer the continuance of the war, to 
peace, accompanied by such a division of the nation as would 
attach the Border Slave States to the Northern portion ; while 
the more violent portion of them would, probably, prefer the con- 
tinuance of the war, to the complete restoration of the Union 
on any terms. But these Border Slave States are, and must 
continue to be the chief theater of the war, so long as the issue 
of the war hangs in the least suspense. We say nothing, here, 
of the absolute necessity of the conquest of the secession party, 
and the restoration of the Union and the power of the National 
Government, as the solitary condition upon which the peace or 
safety of the whole country is possible. What we say is, that 
in the actual condition of the country, of the war, and of the 
avowed aims and recognized obligations of both parties, the ques- 
tion of boundary renders peace impossible, even if both parties 
desired peace upon every other ground. We readily admit that 
there is hardly an imaginable contingency, in which the Confeder- 
ate Government can ever conquer, or the nation ever concede, any 



644 THE CIVIL WAR. [Dec, 

boundary — that ought to be au allowable basis of peace. But 
this only shows how clear it is that the nation can contemplate 
no alternative but triumph or ruin ; and that the conspirators 
against its peace and glory have madly plunged into a wicked 
rebellion, which could have no result but the subjugation of the 
whole nation, or their own destruction. At first, their pretext 
was — the right of each State to secede. Now, they seek to 
conquer States that refuse to secede. Perfidious, at first, to all 
the States ; perfidious, now, to each separate State. 

There are difiiculties of a kind different from any of those yet 
suggested ; and so aggravated by the conduct and principles of 
the secessionists, that there seems to be no possibility of even so 
much as finding a basis on which to negotiate. Take, as an ex- 
ample, their conduct toward the Indian Tribes which occupy, 
thinly, at least one-half of the whole area within our national 
boundaries — and some of the most civilized of which are settled 
upon the finest lands adjoining our inhabited borders, and were 
bound, by treaties highly advantageous to them, to the United 
States. As far as the public has information, it appears that the 
Confederate Government has made diligent efforts to excite these 
savages to war ♦•i^mst us, along the whole Indian frontier, and 
along all the emigrant routes to the Pacific States. Thus much 
is certain, that the Tribes of the Southwest have taken up arms, 
that many thousands of them are boastfully declared by the Con- 
federates to be ready to join their armies, and that a consider- 
able force of their warriors is now with the troops invading Ken- 
tucky. We do not say they are unfit allies for the refugee Ken- 
tuckians who are leading them to the slaughter of their kindred, 
and the devastation of their country. Nor do we say that either 
the savages or the refugee marauders are unfit instruments of 
traitors, who first subvert every principle which holds society to- 
gether in installing their rebellion — and then subvert every pre- 
text on which they revolted, by banding with savages and par- 
ricides in an atrocious attack upon the only sovereignty they 
pretended to revere. We leave to others to depict these enor- 
mities as they deserve, and confide to a just posterity the retri- 
bution of such crimes. What we demand now is, what figure 
are these savage allies of traitors to cut, in the preliminaries of 



1861.] THE CIVIL WAR. 645 

peace ? What stipulations are the Confederate States to demand — 
what guarantees are the American people to give, as the price 
of peace — concerning its future Indian policy, and concerning 
recompense for past Indian perfidy and outrage ? 

The question of slavery offers us another example, in the same 
category with the preceding one, of the madness of the whole 
secession conspiracy ; and another proof that the restoration of 
permanent peace to the country by means of its division into 
two confederacies, or by any other means except the restoration 
of the Union and the maintenance of a single national govern- 
ment coextensive with the whole nation, is totally impossible. 
Upon the supposition that all parties Avere willing to divide the 
nation on the slave line, provided the new confederacies could 
make mutually satisfactory agreements, and could be mutually 
made to keep them in regard to negro slavery ; such a basis of 
peace would rest on this childish absurdity — that the obligations 
of a treaty between hostile States are more effectual than the ob- 
ligations of a government over the difi'erent portions of its own 
citizens — notwithstanding governments have the sanction of 
force in a hundred-fold greater degree than treaties can have, 
and have, in addition, ten thousand sanctions which no treaty can 
have. We think we have demonstrated, on a former occasion, 
that the profitable continuance of negro slavery anywhere on 
this continent, and its continuance at all in the Border Slave 
States, depends absolutely upon the existence of a common na- 
tional government embracing both the Free States and the Slave 
States ; and it seems to us that the developments of the war add 
continually to the force of what we then said. The preservation 
of the Union and the Constitution preserves at the same time, 
in all its integrity, the national settlement of the question of 
slavery made at the adoption of the Constitution itself; which was 
effectual for all the purposes intended, through more than seventy 
years of unparalleled prosperity ; and is competent still through 
all coming time to give peace and security, if anything under 
heaven is competent to do so. On the contrary, forfeiting that 
settlement as soon as we subvert the Constitution and destroy 
the Union — it may be confidently asserted that the new confed- 
eracies which are to arise will find themselves incompetent to set- 



646 THE CIVIL WAK. [Dec, 

tie even the preliminary basis of a treaty concerning their mu- 
tual rights and obligations touching the negro race on this con- 
tinent ; and that, even if they should be able to come to some 
uncertain and temporary understanding on the subject, stable 
peace between the parties, much less stable security to slave pro- 
perty, would be impossible. Our political system, made up of 
sovereign commonwealths united under a supreme Federal Gov- 
ernment, affords not only the highest, but the only effectual pro- 
tection for interests that are local and exceptional — and at the 
same time out of sympathy with the general judgment of man- 
kind. And of all possible interests, that of the owners of slaves, 
in a free country, stands most in need of the protection of such 
a system. It is extremely difficult to say what effect, precisely, 
this war and its possible results may have upon the institution 
of slavery in America. So much at least is certain — that the 
total suppression of the present revolt, is hardly more important 
to any class of American citizens, than to the slaveholders of the 
country : and that the obstinate continuance of the war, by the 
South, will do nothing more surely than drain the slaves, owned 
by secessionists in the Border States, farther south — and leave 
the slave interest in the restored Union, a far weaker political 
element than it was when they sought to strengthen it by revo- 
lution. 

We need not press any further the proof of the great truth 
we are asserting. The service we are doing is not so much to 
disclose new truths, as to make a clear statement of the grounds 
of a common and fixed conviction, which the public mind has 
widely and instinctively adopted. It is a conviction just in itself, 
and noble both in its origin and impulses. We will not agree to 
the ruin of our glorious country ; and so we are not grieved to 
see that we cannot do it with any hope of peace thereby. We 
will not allow the Constitution to be subverted, the Union to be 
destroyed, and the nation to be divided; and so we are glad that 
in the order of God's Providence, the alternative to which the 
nation is shut up — is victory. If the people in the States which 
have taken up arms against our national life, will rise up in their 
might, recover their liberty, and put an end to the traitorous do- 
minion of the cruel and perfidious class minority which is de- 



1861.] THE CIVIL WAR. 647 

grading and oppressing them, the nation has no further cause 
of war with them. If they will not do this, or if they cannot 
do it in their present miserable condition, it must be done for 
them — and it will be. The American people have not sought 
this war ; they were led to the brink, not only of ruin, but of in- 
famy, in the attempt to avoid it. The American people have 
neither approved nor participated in the injuries or the insults, 
inflicted on any portion of the nation by any other portion of 
it. On the contrary, their whole national history attests that, 
whatever factions and sections may have done or attempted, the 
nation has been faithful in its lot, and true to its sublime mission. 
And now, in this great crisis, if God will own our efforts, we will 
retrieve our destiny — and teach mankind a lesson which after 
ages will be slow to forget. 

II. The Power of the Nation shown to be complete, and its duty imperative, to 
crush this rebellion, and preserve the Federal Union and Constitution. 

II. The Art of War — for even those who are the most devoted 
to it as a pursuit, hardly venture to call it a science — has prob- 
ably produced a smaller proportion of individuals who have, in 
the settled judgment of mankind, deserved supreme eminence, 
than any other reputable calling to which the human race has 
addicted itself, or to which its progress has given rise. And not- 
withstanding the perpetual slaughter of the battle-field, during 
the whole life of the world, it would probably be impossible to 
designate as many as twenty pitched battles, in the whole history 
of mankind — concerning which it can be made apparent that 
the destiny of our race would have been materially changed, if 
they had never been fought, or if they had resulted differently. 
There is no adequate evidence that any man now lives, who is 
competent to wield, with the highest efficiency, an army of the 
largest class ; and we are free to risk public ridicule, by expressing 
the opinion that if Napoleon, or Wellington, or Marlborough, or 
Cromwell — not to mention a few more ancient names — had been 
placed in a day's march of Manassas, ten days before the bloody 
and resultless battle, with a force equal to the smallest, and pro- 
vided no better than the worst, of the two armies that fought 
there ; he would probably have cut both of them to pieces within 



648 THE CIVIL WAR. [Dec, 

the ten days. From generation to generation, the art of war 
progresses slowly, and gradually establishes itself upon certain 
axioms and certain results : and then some great genius sudden- 
ly appears, and, despising the axioms and setting at nought the 
results, creates by his conquests new ideas and a new school of 
the art. And then the old process of codifying his campaigns 
into the body of the art of war, is renewed, till another great 
genius appears. And so on, — till our own day: in which, if 
God shall be pleased to point out the man — and the nation shall 
have sense to recognize him — the end will have come. Till such 
a captain appears — one of God's most uncommon gifts — we 
must content ourselves with such judgments as can be formed, 
from the common causes and the common course of events. Or 
if he should appear on the side of our rebellious countrymen — 
and no match for him on ours — we must put forth as much ad- 
ditional force and courage, as will counteract the excess of skill 
against us. It seems to us to be plain — upon any supposition 
that can be made short of the effectual interposition of God foi 
the total change of the course and destiny of this great country, 
and as a necessary consequence of the whole order and result 
of human aifairs — that this nation is not only perfectly competent 
to crush this rebellion, and extinguish the doctrine and practice 
of secession ; but that there is no ordinary possibility of any 
other result. It is this which we now desire to illustrate. 

If the five Border Slave States ( Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, 
Kentucky, and Missouri) had stood firmly by the Union — the 
ten remaining Slave States could hardly have made a show of 
military resistance to the overwhelming power of the nation, even 
if they had all seceded, and been unanimous. The white popu- 
lation of the whole ten may be stated, in round numbers, at about 
four millions, against twenty-four millions in the remaining twen- 
ty-four States. In fact, however, but for the treasonable conduct 
of the secession minorities in the Border States, and especially 
but for the outrage perpetrated in Virginia, by means of which 
the secessionists usurped the control of that State, and sudden- 
ly threw it into a condition of war with the Federal Govern- 
ment ; it is in the highest degree probable, that neither North Car- 
olina, Tennessee, nor Arkansas would have seceded. Moreover, 



1861.] THE CIVIL WAR. 649 

if the State Governments in Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, 
had been loyal, their influence — backed, as it undoubtedly would 
have been, by the mass of the people in those States — would, at 
the very least, have placed the loyal population in North Caro- 
lina, Tennessee, and Arkansas in such a position as to have kept 
the traitors in check in all those States — even if they ventured 
to secede. The very worst that can happen, has already occur- 
red : four of the Border States are the chief theater of the war ; 
three at least, if not four, of those States, are for the Union ; 
one, possibly two of them, may be considered against it. For 
the purposes before us let all five be omitted, in reckoning the 
strength of either party. Let it be supposed that their whole 
white population, which may be stated at about four millions, is 
equally divided — and will add as much, taking the five States, 
to the military force on one side as on the other side. What 
follows is, that the war is to be decided by the relative force of 
the nineteen Free States, and the ten most southerly Slave 
States. But the case is far stronger, in favor of the General 
Government, than this statement would make it appear. For by 
making these Border States the theater of war, however much 
the ten Southern States may gain, the nineteen Northern States 
gain far more, in every way. They gain physically, by gradu- 
ally drawing, as the war progresses, a greater and greater pro- 
portion of Union men into the Federal army ; while to the whole 
extent that these States are occupied by Federal troops, the se- 
cession element is greatest at the first violent military movement, 
and becomes relatively less and less available afterwards. They 
gain morally, by the whole effect produced upon the Union peo- 
ple of the Border Slave States, fighting side by side with the 
Northern soldiers, in a common and glorious cause ; and by the 
whole efi"ect produced on the Northern troops, by seeing for them- 
selves, who and what the loyal people of the South are. But 
they gain also, in a military point of view. To menace Nash- 
ville, is a very different thing from being menaced at Cincinnati. 
A victory at Springfield in Southern Missouri is widely a differ- 
ent thing from a victory at Springfield in Central Illinois. When 
the theater of war passes out of Virginia and Kentucky to the 
South — the beginning of the end to rebellion is reached. If it 
VOL. I. — NO. 4. 7 



650 THE CIVIL WAR. [Dec, 

were to pass out of Virginia and Kentucky to the North, it would 
only mean the annihilation of whatever Confederate troops might 
venture across the Ohio River. The Confederate armies will find 
their attempt to invade Kentucky a very serious matter before 
all is over ; though there is only an air line in their rear, and a 
million of people — one-third of whom are disloyal — immediate- 
ly before them. What could they expect, north of the Ohio 
River — with that broad and generally difficult stream in their rear, 
and six or seven millions of loyal and warlike people, in Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, in point blank range of 
them ? The secession gasconade about wintering in Cincinnati — 
with which the air of the West has been laden for some months — 
when last heard of was making good time, with a strong force, 
through the north-eastern mountains of Kentucky, hurrying 
toward Virginia, out of the way of a small column of raw troops, 
under a navy Lieutenant, ( Nelson, ) who has lately become an 
amateur General. 

Upon the whole, therefore, the case against the nation is not 
quite so bad as we before admitted — when, counting out the 
Border Slave States, it seemed to stand about twenty millions in 
the nineteen Free States, against about four millions in the ten 
secession States of the South. In both clusters of States, we 
leave out all but the Avhite population ; and every one will judge 
for himself how far the leaving out of a few hundred thousand 
free negroes may be unjust to the stronger side, and the leaving 
out of some three millions of slaves, several hundred thousand 
free negroes, and an indeterminate quantity of Indian savages, 
may be unjust to the weaker side. There certainly are condi- 
tions in which this vast body of slaves may be considered a very 
powerful element in the military strength of the South : the chief 
of which conditions are — first, that the military force of the Uni- 
ted States should not be able to penetrate the heart of the dis- 
loyal slave region, — and, secondly, that after penetrating that 
region, the General Government should be weak enough to treat 
slave property, in the hands of rebels and traitors, as if it were 
sacred. On the other hand, there are conditions in which this 
Indian and slave population may become fatal to the weaker par- 
ty ; as, for example, if the Indian savages who have been enlisted 



1861.] THE CIVIL WAR. 651 

against us were required, as the condition of peace and protec- 
tion to their tribes, to ravage those who have engaged their scalp- 
ing knives against our women and children; and if the slaves 
were supported from the estates of their disloyal owners, and 
made to labor upon every species of military work — the num- 
ber, variety, and extent of which needed by a hostile force, in 
such a country as the South, and in the present state of the mili- 
tary art, are so great. Still, however, omitting these populations 
altogether — as neither a weakness nor a strength — there remain 
the abiding elements, face to face, twenty millions against four 
millions. It is certainly true, that no one can tell beforehand 
how a particular battle may eventuate — or how a particular 
campaign may end. No one can guess how many cowards a few 
brave men may conquer — how many fools a man of genius may 
set at nought — how many advantages may be gained over num- 
bers, by superior activity, intelligence and daring. Oliver Crom- 
well conquered Great Britain, Ireland, and Scotland, with a hand- 
ful of men : Bonaparte annihilated three Austrian armies, each 
greater than his own, in one of his brief Italian campaigns: Al- 
exander the Great conquered the whole known world with thirty 
thousand men. And to come to our own times — somebody, we 
don't exactly know who, has held Manassas, and menaced Wash- 
ington City, during this whole war, in defiance of the whole pow- 
er of the nation : and, what seems to us really a marvelous 
achievement — somebody has virtually blockaded the Potomac 
River from one of its shores, in defiance of our whole naval pow- 
er, and in the face of probably a hundred and fifty thousand good 
troops, in his front, and upon his flanks. Still, however, here are 
our twenty millions against four millions — any four millions of 
the former, equal to the latter four millions — and we having every 
possible advantage which they can possess, and many besides of 
the greatest importance, which they do not possess. This is 
the undeniable state of the case, considered as a whole. Upon 
it, there is no ordinary possibility of but one final result. Con- 
cerning it, whatever is known to be out of the ordinary course 
of human affairs, is, in the aggregate, more for us than against 
us. With regard to it, no motive that can operate upon a ra- 
tional mind or a patriotic heart, is wanting to impel us to do 



652 THE crviL WAR. [Dec, 

■with our might, what has been now shown to be completely in 
our power ; — what, it was before shown, involves our national 
ruin if we fail ; and what, we must add, covers us with ignominy 
if we omit. 

In one of our former papers, published in the month of March 
last, we endeavored to point out the method in which the nation- 
al peril at that dark period could be averted, and .to designate 
the elements, few but immense and decisive, in which the tri- 
umphant deliverance of the country lay. Nine or ten months 
of herculean efforts on the part both of the nation and of the 
rebels, have passed since that paper was published. The whole 
field lies far more clearly open before us now than it did then. 
Public opinion, everywhere, has been consolidated in one direc- 
tion or another, and is far more comprehensible. The whole con- 
tinent has passed into a state of war, military operations have 
been conducted on the most gigantic scale, and the nation and 
the rebels have reached a position in which their relative strength 
must be fairly and speedily measured. It seems very clear to 
us, that all the indications, taken together, are in a high degree 
favorable to the country ; and that this can be made apparent in 
the shortest manner, by a slight recapitulation of the points in 
which our national safety seemed to us to lay at the darkest pe- 
riod, and a general view of the tendency and present state of 
public affairs, with reference to them. 

It seemed to us, in the first place, that the salvation of the 
country depended upon the Federal Government's recognizing and 
assuming its great position as the true and only representative 
of the nation, and as the supreme authority in these United 
States : that so acting, its highest mission was to save the na- 
tion — to that end putting forth the whole strength of the coun- 
try — rallying every loyal citizen to its support — and crushing 
treason everywhere. Whoever will compare the state of the na- 
tional administration and of the country, as left by Mr. Buchanan 
and as found by Mr. Lincoln on the 4th of March, with the pres- 
ent aspect of both; will not need any detail by us, to be con- 
vinced that what we then declared to be the first condition of our 
deliverance, has been completely realized, and has produced all 
the effects that we anticipated. The nation was betrayed by the 



1861.] THE CIVIL WAR. 653 

Federal Government, and was virtually lost on the 4th of March, 
1861. The Congress of the United States, under the lead of Mr. 
Lincoln, and by means of a sublime outburst of national patri- 
otism, has retrieved the ruin elaborately prepared for us, through 
long years of perfidy, conspiracy, and treason. The whole dif- 
ference between the two positions of the country may be clearly 
estimated, by picturing to ourselves, on one hand, five hundred 
thousand brave and loyal men under arms ; and by picturing to 
ourselves, on the other hand, a traitorous faction everywhere 
shouting " no coercion," to a betrayed and stupefied people. 

In the second place, the deliverance of the country seemed to 
us to depend upon a vigorous, and, as far as possible, successful 
effort, to arrest the spread of secession, at the cotton line — 
and if that failed, then at the Southern boundary of the Bor- 
der Slave States. It was always our opinion, frequently ex- 
pressed, that a national movement of the whole fifteen Slave 
States, against the Union, could not be defeated. It was our 
opinion for thirty years, that a growing school of Southern pol- 
iticians, had no other object but the production of this result — 
an opinion, the truth of which no one, we suppose, now doubts ; 
and we have personal knowledge that the support of Major 
Breckinridge for the Presidency, in Kentucky, was largely given 
to him under the delusion — countenanced, at least, by himself — 
that the designation of himself as the candidate of the Southern 
wing of the Democracy, meant that they had definitely abandoned 
this conspiracy and all schemes of disunion, and would risk their 
fate as a party and as a people, in the Union. Yes, we perfect- 
ly well know that under this delusion, and because of the deci- 
sive influence of this pretended change in the South upon the 
perpetuity of the Union, multitudes of men — who never saw 
a moment in which they would not willingly have laid down their 
lives for the Union — supported him for the Presidency who, in 
effect, was the representative of disunion. Such is treason. The 
effects which have been produced by the course of events in Vir- 
ginia, plainly show what might have been expected, if all the 
Slave States had cordially united in the revolt : while the effects 
that have been produced by the course of the intrepid Union 
men of Kentucky, under the most difficult circumstances, as 



654 THE CIVIL WAR. [Dec.,' 

plainly show what might have been expected, if all the Border 
Slave States had cordially espoused the cause of the Union, The 
pestilence was not arrested at the cotton line — nor even fully 
stayed at the Southern boundary of the Border States. But 
enough has been done to show how just and important the opin- 
ion we expressed in March was ; to show how fatally the vacil- 
lation and timidity of the nominal Union party in most of the 
Border States, has operated ; and to show how certainly these 
five States will be preserved to the Union, and how decisive that 
fact must be, upon the fate of the revolt. 

In the third place : About the time of Mr. Lincoln's inaugura- 
tion, and in full apprehension, on one side, of the terrible fact 
that Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet had sold the nation to the Southern 
conspirators, and that they were preparing to seize it; and, on 
the other side, with the profound conviction that the state of 
public feeling and opinion throughout the North was incompati- 
ble, in the existing temper of the times, with the continuance of 
the Union, or the steadfast loyalty to it of a single Slave State — 
we did not hesitate to declare that a revolution in opinion and 
feeling at the North must promptly occur, or all was lost. We 
ventured to predict that it would occur ; — that the extreme prin- 
ciples of the party which had carried the Presidential election, 
would not be, could not be carried out; that new, better, and 
more exalted ideas, would supersede the vehement and exagger- 
ated principles of the newly triumphant party ; and that the peo- 
ple of the North would stand by the Union, and by every man, 
everywhere, that was loyal to the country. And now we confi- 
dently assert, that no more illustrious instance of patriotic ardor, 
no more striking proof of the warlike spirit of a free people de- 
voted to the pursuits of peace, has been exhibited in modern 
times — than is to be found in the conduct of the people of the 
North, at this terrible crisis of their country. We have felt 
obliged, many times in the course of many years, to condemn 
certain tendencies in the Northern mind, and various acts which 
seemed to be approved by the mass of the Northern people, hos- 
tile to the rights of the Southern States, and incompatible with 
their own duty as citizens of the United States. In the same 
spirit of fearless justice, we now give expression to our grateful 



1861.] THE CIVIL WAR. 655 

and confiding admiration of conduct on tlie part of the North, 
full of high and multiplied proofs of wisdom, magnanimity and 
heroism. We solemnly believe, this day, that the North is will- 
ing to do for the loyal States of the South, more, in every way, 
than any magnanimous Southern man would have the heart to 
ask. What a shame — what a burning shame — that men should 
be betrayed by villains, to seek each other's lives — who, if they 
did but know one another, would rush into each other's arms. 
The fourth necessity asserted by us, was such a counter revo- 
lution — throughout the more southerly States that had then se- 
ceded, or were then deeply agitated on the subject — as would 
put down the secession movement, and bring the loyal party of 
the South into power, everywhere. Our hope, at first, was that 
this counter revolution would manifest itself in the most power- 
ful of those States — as for example, in Georgia, North Carolina, 
and Tennessee — by means of popular elections, and other ordi- 
nary peaceful means ; and that the weight of an irresistible pub- 
lic opinion — the comparative weakness of the disloyal States — 
and the effectual but forbearing interposition of the Federal Pow- 
er, would deter the leaders of the conspiracy, and give the pa- 
triotism and common sense of the people space and opportunity 
for reaction, concert and triumph. Under any but the most ex- 
traordinary circumstances, that would have been the course and 
result of affairs. To state and explain these circumstances fully, 
appertains to the historian of these eventful times : we have here- 
tofore given a brief and general account of them. We still 
await, still confidently expect, the counter revolution throughout 
the South — which, under ordinarily wise and courageous treat- 
ment, would have crushed the secession conspiracy as soon as it 
had developed its nature, spirit and designs — but which must 
now extinguish it when its course is run. The grounds upon 
which we expect it, instead of being removed, are every way 
confirmed by the progress of events. It is more certain now 
than it was at first, that the conspirators have reason to dread, 
and that loyal persons may confidently rely on, the resolute pur- 
pose of the American people to uphold the Union, the Constitu- 
tion and the laws : so that the assurance of unavoidable failure 
to the one, and of speedy and complete deliverance to the other, 



656 THE CIVIL WAR. [Dec, 

becomes day by day the very nourishment of the reaction which 
is inevitable in its set time. That which is thus unavoidable, in 
the nature of the case as it exists, cannot be called in question, 
by any one who believes that there are such human endowments 
as patriotism and common sense ; by any one who confides in the 
capacity of mankind for self-government ; by any one who knows 
that to deceive a people, and then betray them, and then oppress 
them, and then impoverish them, are crimes which no people ever 
forgive ; by any one who understands that the indignation of 
mankind is relentless, in proportion as the sacrifices have been 
costly and bitter which the folly of corrupt rulers forced them 
to make, to no end but ruin and ignominy ; by any one who ac- 
cepts the assurance of God, that civil society is an ordinance 
from heaven, and is incompatible with the permanent reign of 
anarchy. Nor do the innumerable facts, which, in a thousand 
ways, reach us from the whole area covered by the usurped pow- 
er of the Confederate Government, fail to confirm, in the public 
mind, the conviction already stated. On the one hand, there 
comes up a subdued but incessant wail of a loyal people groan- 
ing for deliverance ; on the other, a fierce cry for blood and plun- 
der, mixed with a wild clamor about cordial unanimity. The na- 
tion pities and heeds that wail of our brethren, and, by God's help, 
will make it audible throughout the earth, as a lesson to all con- 
spirators. And so far is it from being credible that their deliver- 
ance cannot be accomplished except by the slaughter of vast pop- 
ulations — nor maintained afterward except by immense stand- 
ing armies ; all the facts of this sad case show, that what has 
happened in all ages and countries, will happen again here ; and 
the mass of the people speedily and joyfully return to their alle- 
giance, as soon as the military force of the rebels is broken, and 
society is allowed to return to its ordinary condition. These are 
terrible episodes in the history of nations. No people has es- 
caped them : it is the feeble only that perish by means of them : 
the great survive them, and become greater. 

The Internal State of the Country, as affected by the War. 

m. Supposing what has been said to be worthy of serious 
consideration, as pointing out the single condition on which the 



1861.] THE CIVIL WAR. 657 

restoration of peace is possible — and as showing the complete 
ability, and the clear duty, of the American people to enforce 
that condition, and conquer peace : it becomes all the more im- 
portant to observe with candor, the actual state of the country, 
as that is influenced by the war, or as it may, in turn, influence 
its progress and end ; because, according to our apprehension, 
the indefinite continuance of the war can be arrested only by the 
triumph of the nation. Classified in an orderly way, the Civil 
and Military condition of the country is sufficiently though in- 
cidentally brought to light, for our present design, in the course 
of the two preceding divisions of this paper. What remains, re- 
lates, therefore, more particularly to the Moral, Political, Finan- 
cial, and Industrial condition of the country — considered with 
relation to the war. It is to some general consideration of this 
aspect of the case, in relation to our general course of thought, 
that we now proceed. 

When we speak of the Moral condition of the country, we do 
not intend, especially, its spiritual state, as in the sight of God. 
We mean that moral state which is the sum of all the good and 
all the evil, presented in our mixed and confused probationary 
state — and presented to us now and amongst ourselves, as char- 
acteristic of our condition, and as decisively influential upon the 
future. This rebellion begins in an outrage upon many of the 
clearest obligations of Natural Religion — loyalty, love of coun- 
try, fidelity to public trusts, gratitude for honors bestowed, truth 
and manhood in the discharge of obligations voluntarily assumed, 
nay, eagerly sought. How many of the leaders of this rebellion 
are free from the stain on their personal honor, of deliberately 
transgressing some or all of those natural obligations, which no 
contingency under heaven can justify any one in violating ! We 
speak not of the mere fact of treason, as defined by human laws. 
What we speak of is the perfidy, in every revolting form, which 
has marked this treason, in its birth, in its growth, and in its pres- 
ent frantic struggle : men seeking to overthrow monuments, ce- 
mented by the blood of their immediate ancestors ; men dishon- 
oring names, illustrious through many generations ; men betray- 
ing their friends, their neighbors, their kindred; men seducing 
children to take up arms against their parents — and then band- 



658 THE CIVIL WAR. [Dec, 

ing them with savages to desolate their own homes with fire :ind 
sword. It is a madness — a fearful madness. No madness can 
be greater, except the madness that could induce this great na- 
tion to suppose that God allows it to let this go unpunished. 

Perhaps the most dangerous, as well as the most universal 
form, in which this characteristic perfidy has made itself manifest, 
is the suddenness with which thousands of spies and informers 
have appeared throughout the nation, the tenacity with which 
they have everywhere followed their degrading employment, and 
the alacrity with which honors and rewards, almost to the very 
highest, have been lavished upon them by the rebel government 
and people. In the States which have seceded, the mass of the 
loyal people, overwhelmed by force, have quietly acquiesced. In 
the loyal States, the mass of the disloyal people — wherever op- 
portunity ofi'ered — seem to have given themselves up to a reg- 
ular system of espionage, by means of which the rebel authori- 
ties, civil and military, have been kept perfectly informed of all 
they desire to know. All ranks of society, persons in private 
life and those in every kind of public employment from the low- 
est to the highest, persons of every age and of both sexes; ap- 
pear to make it the chief business of their lives to obtain secret 
and dangerous information for the benefit of the rebel authorities. 
Betraying their country, they break with indifference every tie 
that binds human beings to each other. The humiliated parent 
doubts whether his own disloyal child will not betray him ; the 
husband may not safely confide in his disloyal wife ; and as for 
the obligation of civil or military oaths, or the honor which 
should bind every one in whom trust is reposed, no loyal man in 
America any longer believes that the mass of secessionists scat- 
tered through the loyal States, recognize the validity of these 
sacred bonds. It is, we suppose, certain, past doubt, that every 
important military movement since the war began has been be- 
trayed to the enemy before it was made ; and nine-tenths of the 
evils and miscarriages we have suffered have been occasioned by 
spies mid informers in our midst. 

Such a state of affairs as this cannot be endured. The danger 
of it renders it intolerable. The enormity of it justifies any rem- 
edy its extirpation may require. And they who are innocent of 



1861.] THE CIVIL WAR. 659 

such turpitude themselves, instead of raising a clamor at the use 
of any means by which society seeks to protect itself, ought to be 
thankful for any opportunity to clear themselves from the sus- 
picion under which they may have fallen. And they who are 
guilty, and expect to silence public justice by clamor about ir- 
regular proceedings against them, ought to bear in mijad, that a 
people outraged past endurance, has much shorter processes than 
any that imply infallibility in corrupt judges, or writs out of 
chancery. It does not appertain to us to argue and determine 
nice and doubtful points of criminal law — concerning which men 
who ought to be competent to decide, are pleased to differ and 
to dispute ; and which the present Chief Justice of the United 
States is alledged to have decided in two exactly opposite ways. 
The boundaries between the civil and military authorities, in time 
of war, under the Constitution and laws of the United States — 
may be sufficiently obscure, to serve the turn of those who ha- 
bitually transgress both. And the boundaries between those 
powers which can be exercised, in war, by the President alone, 
and those which must be exercised jointly by the power both of 
Congress and the President, may be liable to grave questioning 
by persons, amongst others, who are not very desirous to have 
their career of mischief cut short. Spies, and other persons who 
may be justly considered liable to military punishment, can look, 
we suppose, with very small hope to honest civil tribunals, for 
deliverance from military authority ; and it is very certain that 
all the prisons in the United States would not hold the tenth part 
of those, who have made themselves liable to punishment for such 
offenses. As for offenses of other kinds, especially for the high- 
est offense known to the laws of all civilized countries, Treason — 
these, when added to the highest military offense, that of being 
a Spy, (and no one can be a spy in this war without being a 
traitor also ) — the public authorities are certainly inexcusable if 
they punish innocent men, when so many are flagrantly guilty — 
and are hardly excusable when they punish insignificant men, 
when so many of great distinction have been allowed to escape, 
or are still unquestioned. The legality of particular modes of 
arrest, the proper legal treatment after arrest, and the whole doc- 
trine about the writ of habeas corpus ; are matters, no doubt, of 



660 THE CIVIL WAR. ' [Dec, 

great importance in their place. As for us, we are ready to 
stand by the chief law officer of the Government, the Attorney 
General of the United States, who, as we understand the matter, 
has given the explicit sanction of his high professional standing, 
and that of his great office, to the course which the President 
has taken. And we suppose all loyal men will agree with us, 
that — if the American people can endure the pretended violations 
of law, which their enemies say are daily perpetrated in the ar- 
rest and detention of suspected, and indicted, Spies and Traitors — 
it is no great thing to ask of those who declare the Constitution 
to be already a nullity, and all lawful government at an end, 
that they will bear with composure irregularities which loyal men 
do not complain of. And, perhaps, all earnest patriots would 
agree, that, at the worst, the salvation of the country from the 
reign of anarchy and the despotism of traitors, is worth all the 
human laws and constitutions in the world. We can make gov- 
ernments ; for society is supreme over them. But we have only 
this one country. And it is audacious hypocrisy, for those who 
are seeking alike the overthrow of our government, and the de- 
gradation of our country — to revile us about some pretended 
irregularity, in our attempt to subject them to punishment, for 
their crimes against the existence of society. 

The financial condition and prospects of the country — the 
cost of the war in money, the questions of public credit, taxes, 
currency, public debt, and the like — are of great importance in 
themselves ; and the use which is made of the popular ignorance 
on such subjects — by exaggerating whatever is e\'il and suppress- 
ing whatever is favorable, and by both means shaking the public 
constancy in pushing the war to a complete triumph — adds 
greatly to that importance. They who are familiar with such 
topics can do no greater service to the country than to remove 
all mystery from them, and disclose with precision our condition 
and prospects with reference to them. For ourselves, we readily 
admit that, in our judgment, the end demanded — namely, the in- 
dependence of the nation, the freedom of the people, the securi- 
ty of society, and the glory of the country — ought to be achiev- 
ed, let the pecuniary cost and the financial result be what they 
may. After our triumph, the country will remain, and it will be- 



1861.] " THE CIVIL WAK. 661 

long to our posterity ; and no one need doubt that the triumphant 
people will make the glorious country worth all it cost us to save 
both ; nor that posterity will venerate, as they should, the heroic 
generation that sacrificed all, to save all. There is, however, 
no ordinary possibility that very great pecuniary sacrifices will 
be required of the loyal portion of the nation ; and it is not out 
of the reach of probability that they may, as a whole, derive 
considerable pecuniary advantage from the aggregate result of 
this unnatural war. We will explain ourselves in as few words 
as possible. 

So far as the great losses, if not the total ruin, of large num- 
bers of people in a nation, are necessarily pecuniary misfortunes 
to the whole population ; we do not see how the restored nation 
is to escape very great loss by this war. For it seems to us im- 
possible for the Southern States, even if the war could be ar- 
rested at once, to extricate themselves from their deplorable fi- 
nancial condition, without extreme sacrifice; just as it seems to 
us certain that the main source of their affluence, in their own 
opinion — their virtual monopoly of cotton in the market of the 
world — is forever ended. If they protract this war to their ut- 
most power, the Confederate Government, and every State gov- 
ernment connected with it, will come out of the war utterly 
bankrupt. The creditors of all those Governments will be so far 
ruined, as the loss of some thousand millions of dollars due to 
them by those Governments, can ruin their creditors. Some 
thousand millions more will be sunk in individual losses, uncon- 
nected with the Governments. Every species of property will fail. 
Bay one-half or more, in its merchantable value. The whole pa- 
per currency, after falling gradually till it ceases to be compe- 
tent for any payment at all — will fall as an entire loss on the 
holders of it ; the precious metals having long ago ceased to cir- 
culate. In the meantime, if the country is not speedily con- 
quered, it passes over from the hands of the present usurpers, into 
the hands of three or four hundred thousand armed men — whose 
only means of existence is their arms. This, in every item of it, 
means desolation. In the aggregate, it presents a condition, 
which all the statesmen in the world have not the wisdom to un- 
ravel into prosperity, without first passing through multiplied evils, 



662 THE cnaL war. [Dec, 

the least of which is infinitely greater than the greatest of those 
for which they took up arms against the Union. No such revo- 
lution as that attempted in the South can succeed ; and its inevita- 
ble failure draws after it, always, a revolution in property. The 
present disloyal race of cotton and sugar and rice planters of 
the South — its great property holders, Avho ought, above all 
men, to have put down this rebellion — will, as a class, disap- 
pear, beggared, perhaps in large proportion extinct, when the war 
is over. It is a fearful retribution ; but we do not see how they 
can escape it. 

In effect, therefore, the Federal Government and the loyal 
States of America have no alternative but, besides maintaining 
their own financial solvency and credit during the war, to re- 
trieve the ruin of the Southern States, as a part of the nation, 
after the war is done. No enlightened man ought to have any 
doubt of their ability to do both. At the present moment, we 
will enter no farther into the question of the national ability to 
do the latter, after the war is over ; than to desire the reader to 
make, for himself, a full and just comparison of the present fi- 
nancial conditions of the United States, and the Confederate 
States — and satisfy himself of the true causes of the immeasur- 
able difference between them. It is, just now, the other point — 
our financial ability to carry the war triumphantly through, with- 
out great pecuniary sacrifices to the loyal people of the nation — 
that interests the public mind; and about which we have a few 
words to add. 

A nation, like an individual, can spend its entire annual ac- 
cumulations, within the year, without being a cent the poorer, or 
a cent in debt. It can do this forever ; and it can do it in car- 
rying on war, as well as in any other way. If all the people 
of the United States would put the whole of their annual accu- 
mulations in the hands of the Government, as a gift, their bound- 
less wealth might be spent on war, forever, and nobody be any 
poorer — and the Government owe no debt. If they will not let 
the Government have it as a gift, there are two other modes 
by which the Government may obtain the whole of it — and still 
no one be any poorer. It can be done by taxation ; — limiting 
the taxes — at the highest — to the available annual accumula- 



THE CIVIL WAR. 663 



1861.] 

tions; and distributing the taxes so that they shall fall only on 
the accumulations: both very nice operations, which few pubhc 
men have ever understood, and few nations have willingly en- 
dured. It can be done also, by means of Pahlic Credit; which 
is at once the highest product of civilization, and its greatest safe- 
guard. There is a third method by which, emphatically, in wars 
like this, conquering nations are accustomed to relieve them- 
selves : first by making the conquered party pay, in whole or m 
part, the expenses of the war; and secondly, by confiscating 
the property of enemies, and especially of rebels. The equity 
of these latter methods cannot be questioned ; and they have this 
high justification, that they discountenance all rash, needless, and 
criminal wars. It was a madness in the Confederate States — 
as the weaker and the aggressive party — to set us the example of 
the most sweeping confiscations ; for it pointed to a fund, in the 
hands of traitors, too large to be stated with even approximate 
truth, out of which we might conquer them without costmg any 
loyal man a farthing. 

The Congress of the United States has resorted to both ot the 
two expedielits first stated above : Taxation and Loans to the Gov- 
ernment. To state the matter in other words, this generation 
agrees to take on itself its fair share of preserving the country ; 
and this share is expressed in the form of taxes and interest 
upon money borrowed by the Government. It justly proposes 
to cast on future generations, some portion of the cost of that 
which concerns them as deeply as it does us; and this share is 
expressed in whatever amount of debt and interest this genera- 
tion may leave unpaid. Let us observe, however, that the na- 
ture of wealth is such, in the present state of human civilization, 
that the surplus capital of the world, to an almost boundless ex- 
tent, is constantly seeking for safe and easily convertible invest- 
ments ; amongst the most eagerly desired of which, are such as 
are the most likely to be perpetual. The debt we may leave to 
posterity, therefore, may be truly said to be no more than the 
interest in perpetuity, on the amount unpaid, and which posteri- 
ty may prefer not to pay, when it shall enter upon the most 
glorious inheritance in the world, charged with a very small com- 
parative annuity, created in defence of the inheritance itself. If 



664 THE CIVIL WAR. [Dec, 

this war should last five years, at a cost of five hundred millions 
a year, over and above the income from direct and indirect taxes, 
we should make our children the foremost nation on earth ; and 
oblige them to pay, therefor, one hundred and fifty millions a 
year. This is less, a good deal, than the yearly interest paid on 
the present national debt of Great Britain : and it is extremely 
probable it could be raised, in a prosperous condition of the 
country, by indirect taxes, without detriment to a single one of 
its great interests, and with great advantage to many of them. 
But, in truth, we may say, the war will not cost so much as five 
hundred millions a year, over and above the ordinary income; 
nor will the war last five years ; nor will there be any difliculty, 
under a wise and economical administration of public aifairs, for 
the same generation that makes the war debt, to pay its interest, 
and gradually redeem the debt itself. Nay; a previous limita- 
tation stated by us, is theoretically true, only in a certain sense. 
For any man, or any nation, in gooa credit, can borrow, from 
other men and other nations, and do so borrow continually, im- 
mense sums of money, on the credit not of surplus accumulation, 
nor even of gross income — but of the capital itself; — nay, often 
to the value of an enormous credit beyond the value of the cap- 
ital itself. We were originally a thrifty people, economical in 
paying salaries, averse to high taxes, and shy of public debts ; 
some indulgence in which latter, in later years, has not made us 
more favorable to them. But of all absurdities, none can be 
more palpable than the idea of any inherent pecuniary difficul- 
ty on the part of the American people, in carrying out this war 
to complete triumph. Undoubtedly, this is on the supposition of 
competent skill, in the raising and disbursement of such immense 
sums of money. And, so far as we are informed and are com- 
petent to judge, there is much reason to ascribe the highest ca- 
pacity to the present Secretary of the Treasury. Undoubtedly, 
also, it is on the further supposition that this vast fund is neither 
stolen, nor perverted, nor used wastefully and fraudulently ; but 
that it is skillfully, faithfully, and economically applied to its right 
use, by the agents of the Government, through whose hands it 
passes. To this end, it is probable, further legislation by Con- 
gress is needed — as well as a sleepless vigilance on the part of 



1861.] THE CIVIL WAR. 665 

the public — and the condign punishment, without respect to per- 
sons, of all official corruption. 

There are some other topics of much interest, touching which we 
had designed to say something — as, for example, the question of 
paper currency, whether furnished by the Government or the 
Banks, in its relation to the circulation of the precious metals and 
the possible drain of them from the country — and the bearing of 
the actual management of the public finances upon these questions, 
and upon the internal trade of the country, by means of the sub- 
stitution of cash payments, instead of credits, both in public and 
private transactions. But great as the bearing of these topics 
is, upon the general questions we are discussing, the topics them- 
selves are too much beside the common knowledge of mankind, to 
be very clearly stated in the remaining space allotted to this portion 
of this paper. We content ourselves, therefore, with saying that, 
in our opinion, an incompetent Secretary of the Treasury had it 
completely in his power to have placed the public finances in a 
condition out of which immediate and ruinous discredit to the Gov- 
ernment would have sprung — and, as a consequence, the gen- 
eral circulation of a depreciated paper currency, the disappear- 
ance of the precious metals, a ruinous fall in the value of prop- 
erty, the impossibility of active trade, and the gradual impov- 
erishment of the country, in the midst of the war. Instead of 
calamities so untimely and dreadful, it seems to us perfectly clear 
that the course taken by Mr. Chase has had a most powerful in- 
fluence in maintaining the public credit at a very high point ; in 
opening to the Government, as a favored borrower, the whole 
unfixed wealth of the nation ; and in aiding, in a very high de- 
gree, the rapid development of that prosperity which the indus- 
trial condition of the country exhibits in all the loyal States. 
There are, no doubt, other causes — some of them greater than 
was foreseen by most persons, others which were not foreseen 
by any one — to which we must attribute the chief influence in 
producing the universal industrial activity, and the substantial 
industrial prosperity, which the loyal States enjoy ; instead of 
the starvation to which the mad conspirators of the South ex- 
pected to reduce those States. It is a great lesson — this un- 
expected working of this civil war upon the industrial condition 

VOL. I. — NO. 4. 8 



66Q THE crviL WAR. p)ec., 

of the two sections of the Union. We would willingly enter into 
some exposition of the causes, which have warded off so many 
heavy calamities from one section, and hurled them with such 
crushing force upon the other. But we content ourselves, as in 
several previous instances, with suggesting the great fact to the 
reader, and urging him to verify it for himself. Its bearing is 
most decisive on the course and end of this war. And its just 
exposition throws great light on the true interests of the whole 
country, and on the real sources of its power. 

The External Relations of the Country, considered with reference to the War. 

IV. The secessionists would have mankind believe, that their 
conduct is prompted by the most elevated principles, and directed 
by the noblest instincts. In illustration of these pretensions, 
those who were in the highest civil stations, plundered the Gov- 
ernment under which they were Senators, Members of Congress, 
and Cabinet officers : those who were in the naval and military 
service, betrayed the flag of their country, and delivered up, not 
only strong places, but the troops confided to them : those who 
had the opportunity, robbed the Government of money : those 
who were on foreign diplomatic service, used their positions to the 
greatest possible injury of the nation: and if there were any ex- 
ceptions of honorable conduct amongst them (we do know of 
a single one) they occurred amongst those of subordinate rank, 
and have been concealed by their comrades, as marks of weak- 
ness. All these degradino; evidences of the total demoralization 
of the party, occurred in that stage of the conspiracy, immedi- 
ately preparatory to the commencement of open hostilities by 
them. At first, they seemed to have supposed that the nation 
would make no serious attempt to reduce them by force, and that 
a great people, betrayed and sold, would accept the ignominious 
fate prepared for it. When they awoke from this stupid dream, 
their first resort was, very naturally, to an exhibition of the 
quality of their heroism ; and their wail of "iVb coercion " re- 
sounded through the land — echoed back by the concerted cry of 
their secret allies in the loyal States, "Peace, on any terms, with 
our brethren." Their next resort, just as naturally, was a mani- 
festation, of the reality of their boasted confidence in themselves, 



1861.] THE CIVIL A7AR. 667 

in their resources, and in their cause. This, also, they exhibited 
in a manner perfectly characteristic. Emissaries were despatched 
to all foreign nations, embracing even the distracted Govern- 
ments south of us, and not forgetting even our Indian tribes, or 
the Mormon kingdom. Everywhere, under the sun, where the least 
help seemed attainable, by whatever means they supposed might 
be effectual, they eagerly sought it. Sometimes by menaces, 
sometimes by solicitations, sometimes seeking alliance, sometimes 
protection, sometimes offering everything, sometimes begging for 
anything — even for a King, if they could get nothing better. 
But always, and everywhere, help was what they wanted ! Help, 
against their own country, which they had betrayed. Oh ! patri- 
ots ! Help, against their own people, whom they professed to 
have terrified, and to be able to subdue. Oh ! heroes ! A more 
shameful record does not disfigure the history of sedition. 

The United States have had three foreign wars, in eighty-six 
years ; two with Great Britain, one with Mexico ; the whole three 
occupying less than one-seventh part of their national existence. 
Peace is emphatically the desire and policy of the nation ; for 
peace offers to it conquests, well understood by it, far greater 
than any nation ever obtained by war. To treat all nations as 
friends, to treat them all alike, to have alliances with none, to 
have treaties of peace and commerce with all, to demand nothing 
that is not just and eqiial, to submit to nothing that is wrong : 
this is the simple, wise, and upright foreign policy of this great 
country. Seated, so to speak, on the outer margin of the world, 
as the world's civilization stood at the birth of this great nation, 
the fathers of the Republic understood and accepted the peculiar 
lot which God had assigned to their country ; and their descend- 
ants, to the fourth and fifth generation, had steadily developed 
the noble and fruitful policy of their ancestors, beholding con- 
tinually the increasing power and glory, in the fruition of which, 
in our day, they constituted one of the chief empires of the world. 
Whatever else the nation may have learned, or left unlearned, in 
a career so astonishing ; it has learned at least that the career 
itself is not yet accomplished, and that it must not be cut short. 
It must not be ; for we dare not allow it, as we would answer to 
God, to the human race, to the shades of our ancestors, and to 



668 THE CIVIL WAR. [Dec, 

the reproaches of our posterity. The very idea of forcing us, 
by means of foreign intervention, besides the indignation it be- 
gets, shows us how indispensable it is to our independence as a 
nation, that we must preserve the power by which to defy all such 
atrocious attempts. The true interpretation for a wise nation to 
put on such a menace, is that it already behooves it to become 
more powerful. In the present condition of the chief nations of 
the earth, invincible strength is the first condition of national in- 
dependence. And we, who are out of the European community 
of States, and out of the scope of their fixed ideas of European 
balance of power, which has, for so long a period, regulated that 
continent : are, beyond all other nations, pressed with the neces- 
sity of augmenting, instead of diminishing our power, if we would 
preserve our freedom. Two nations of moderate force made out 
of ours — and the continent is at the mercy of every powerful Eu- 
ropean combination : and this is the idea of freedom and glory, 
that characterizes the Confederate Government. One mighty na- 
tion — and the United States may defy all Europe combined ; and 
this is the American idea of American independence. Let the 
fact, therefore, be taken as final, that any foreign attempt to 
support the secession rebellion, is not merely tantamount to a 
declaration of war — but to war against the future independence 
of the United States. And let the Federal Government clearly 
understand, that this is the deliberate sense of the American 
people. And let all foreign Governments be made fully aware 
that this is the sense in which such an attempt will be taken. 

We do not ourselves believe that any foreign Government will 
interfere in our unhappy civil war. The doctrine of non-inter- 
vention in the domestic affairs of nations, is not only the settled 
international law of Europe ; but it has been of late thoroughly 
and generally enforced, and its present breach would completely 
tear in pieces the web of diplomacy that involves the European 
system of peace. Nor do we see what any European nation 
could gain by assailing us, comparable to the risk it would run. 
They certainly would get but little cotton by it, if that is what 
they seek — for some years to come, if ever. Cotton is a pro- 
duct of the plow and the hoe — not of the sword and the gun ; 
and commerce means peace, not war. We do see, moreover, how 



1861.] THE CIVIL WAR. « 669 

any serious injury to the United States, might fatally affect one 
and another European nation ; and we can hardly imagine the 
overthrow of our national power to be attempted by any Euro- 
pean combination, under existing circumstances, without produ- 
cing a general European war — if not immense European revolu- 
tions. France, it is clear, has the highest interest in preventing 
the destruction of the only maritime power in the world, besides 
herself, that can even keep in check the dominion of England 
over the sea; a dominion which, for seventy years, France has 
been diligently preparing to dispute. England, whatever may 
be the wishes and feelings of certain classes, is still more thor- 
oughly restrained. For — to say nothing of the probable loss of 
her American possessions, nothing of the ruin of her commerce 
throughout the world — her fierce population, educated for a whole 
generation to a fanatical hatred of slavery, and having hardly 
finished paying a hundred millions of dollars to extinguish it in 
their own cotton and sugar colonies ; would be slow to indulge in 
the spending of two or three thousand millions more, in a war 
which they would understand to be for the maintenance of the 
very cotton and sugar slavery in foreign States, which they have 
so lately bought out, at home. They are a people, besides, that 
when driven to extremity, have small faith in royal dynasties — 
and have, before now, despatched kings in the closet, on the bat- 
tle-field, and upon the scaffold. Spain is hardly worth speaking 
about in this connection, except as the owner of some desirable 
islands in the Gulf of Mexico ; mare nostrum ( our sea ) as the 
Romans proudly called the Mediterranean. And these are the 
chief maritime powers of Europe — certainly the only ones we 
need take into this account. We will add nothing concerning 
the friendly dispositions of all other European Governments ; 
nothing concerning the public opinion of Europe, before which 
even Governments must bow ; nothing concerning the traditional 
and vehement sympathy of those masses of European population 
who make revolutions, whose hearts are with the United States 
even against their own sovereigns, and so many thousands of 
whose near kindred and friends are to-day amongst the best of- 
ficers and most effective troops in our armies. Enough, it seems 
to us, has been said to direct the thoughts of the reader toward 



670 » THE CIVIL WAR. [Dec, 

those considerations, which ought to satisfy the public mind on 
this particular topic. With ordinary prudence, courage, and fair 
dealing, on the part of our Government, with foreign States, it 
does not appear to us that there is any ordinary possibility of a 
serious rupture with any of them, growing out of this war. 

If, however, contrary to our judgment of the facts, war should 
be forced upon us by any foreign nation — or should occur from 
any untoward accident; there is no reason to doubt our ability 
to put down the rebellion in the South, and maintain the Union, 
notwithstanding the utmost aid the greatest foreign nation could 
give to the rebels. We will not now discuss the subject, in that 
aspect. Such a war as we have said, will, probably, not occur 
in our day. If it ever does occur, either it will wholly fail in 
its avowed object — or its effects will be far greater and more 
lasting, than they who bring it on expect or intend. Let man- 
kind, at length, receive the sublime truth, that great nations do 
not die ; that great peoples do not perish. Let them accept, at 
last, the astonishing fact — more palpable in the developments 
of our age, than ever before — that nationalities once established, 
are, according to any measure of time known to history, really 
immortal. And then let them remember, that this is, in truth, 
a great nation, and that the nationality shared by the American 
people, is not only thoroughly established, but one of the most 
distinct and powerful that ever existed. 

It seems proper, in this connection, to make some general al- 
lusion to the Naval arm of the public service, and to the Naval 
power of the United States. Proper in some part of this paper; 
because that element of our national power, must be considered 
decisive of the contest with the rebel States, even if they were 
in other respects as strong as the nation itself. Proper in this 
place ; because it is the supremacy of the Navies both of France 
and Great Britain over ours — that exposes us to the degradation 
even of a menace, from either of those poweas — and that begets 
the wild hope in the Confederate Government, that either of them 
will interfere in this war, on its behalf. If the Navy of the Uni- 
ted States bore any fair comparison with that of either of the 
two powers that rank with us, as the great maritime States of 
the world; no one ever would have heard a whisper about the 



1861.] THE CIVIL WAK. 671 

armed intervention of either of them, in our domestic troubles. 
And if, at the commencement of this rebellion, the military ma- 
rine of the United States, even such as it then was, had been 
promptly and skillfully used, the revolt could have been suppress- 
ed at the tenth part — perhaps the hundreth part — of the treasure 
and the blood it may cost. It is, unhappily, true that the con- 
spiracy against the country embraced a large number of the offi- 
cers of the Navy, as well as of the army; and that the ships 
and Navy Yards, as well as the Forts and Regiments, had been 
carefully disposed, by a corrupt administration, in such a manner 
as to render them a^ little serviceable as possible. But, besides 
this, both arms of the service, and especially the Navy, were shame- 
fully inadequate to the safety, the power, and the dignity of the 
nation; and both arms, but especially the Navy, came utterly 
short, at first, of what might have been jufetly expected of them. 
It is to be hoped that the time has fully come, to retrieve errors 
which have cost us so much. 

From the remotest antiquity, the maritime powers of the world 
have exerted an influence over human afi'airs, altogether dispro- 
portionate to their relative strength, as compared with other na- 
tions. The Phoenicians, the maritime cities of Greece, the Greek 
cities of Asia Minor, the Carthagenians, the Italian Free Cities 
of the Middle Ages, more recently Holland, and, for nearly two 
centuries past, Great Britain : everywhere, in all ages, the same 
truths are palpable — commerce is the parent of national wealth — 
and a military marine is, relatively to all other means of national 
power and security, by far the cheapest, the most effective, and 
the least dangerous to public freedom. The United States are 
fitted, in every way, to become the first maritime power in the 
world. And some of the best fruits of the terrible lesson we are 
now learning, will be lost ; unless our statesmen of the present 
atre, and of future generations, comprehend more clearly than 
hUherto, that the mission set before the American people cannot 
be accomplished, either in its internal completeness, or its ex- 
ternal force, except by means of a military marine equal, at the 
very least, to the greatest in the world. 

The liberty and glory of the Greeks were altogether personal. 
The freedom and power of the Roman Republic were altogether 



572 



THE CIVIL WAR. 



[Dec, 



public. The great problem yet to be solved, is the transcendent 
union of both. It belongs to the American people, if they see 
fit, to give and enjoy this sublime illustration of human grandeur. 
The indispensable elements of success, are, hiternaUy, the perfect 
preservation of our political system, in its whole purity, its "whole 
force, and its whole extent: and,' extei'Jialli/, the complete inde- 
pendence of the nation, of all foreign powers. In maintaining 
the former, our immediate necessity is — to extinguish, at what- 
ever cost, this civil war. In preserving the latter, our immediate 
necessity is — to repel, amicably if we can, with arms if need be, 
and at every hazard, all foreign interference* in support of this 
rebellion. We are able, if God requires it at our hands, to do 
both, by His help. Our star is set, when we fail of doing either. 
With nations, there is a great choice in the way of dissolution — 
the choice between the contempt, and the veneration, of the hu- 
man race. 



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